from
POEMS
{ 2008 }
for my father
Paul E. Young
“BRUDDA”
1942–2004
and my grandmother
Joyce Pitre Young
“MUDDA”
1921–2004
Since there was no better color
or name, we called the dog
Blackie, insurance no one would forget
the obvious. One of the few dark ones
in the bunch, the only male,
he died twelve human years later
standing on a vet’s table—
when the news came Mama
Annie, visiting, gathered us
in a circle of hands, called up
Jesus to the touch, to protect.
But that year when beautiful
still meant Black, when I carried
home my first dog full of whimpers
& sudden dukey, we warmed him
in our basement with a bottle disguised
as his mother, we let his hair grow long
around his feet, just as ours did
around ears, unbent necks. Back
in the day, my mother cut my afro
every few months, bathroom layered
with headlines proclaiming the world’s end,
our revolution. I cannot recall
when I first stepped into the reclining
thrones of the barbershop
when I first demanded to go there alone,
motherless, past the spinning white
& red sign left over from days of giving
blood, to ask for my head turned
clean, shorn, for the cold to hold.
I only remember how back then the room
seemed to fill with darkness as she trimmed
my globe of hair, curls falling like an earth
I never thought would be anywhere
but at my feet, how the scissors twanged
by these ears like the raised voice
of a Southern gentleman the moment after
some beautiful boy segregates coffee, no cream,
black, onto his creased & bleached lap.
for Robert Scott
No sign or behind warming
could keep us from careening
down hills or popping wheelies;
the blue brake on our Big
Wheels only helped us peel
out, skid. Robert & I were Tuff
Buddies, friends for life, two kids
thrown together like the sandbox
& swings our fathers put up
in the gap between buildings.
We dug & played but mostly
sailed down Buswell Street
on those glorified tricycles souped
up our own way, ripping off
hokey handle-ribbons that fanned
useless, bicentennial. We removed
the blue, low-backed safety
seat, then conveniently lost it—better
able to stand for jumps, dismounts,
we’d hit the raised ramp at hill’s bottom
then leap & pray the same way Robert,
Superdog, & I once spilled out a red
wagon right before it swerved, then
plunged through the garage
of my new house. Beyond
that patched hole our hides paid for
my Big Wheel still rots. I wouldn’t let
them sell it with the yard; I still love
the wheels’ blue click, black scrape
of plastic tire on the walk. I guess
I’m still holding on some to days
like that, still counting ten
like when D Doc would come over, greet
Robert & me with a handshake, counting
out loud, clenching our fingers to what
we thought death. Whoever lasted
got a half-dollar & we somehow always
made it, miraculous. What did I know
then of love but licorice & the slow
Sunday smell of the drugstore
Doc built up himself, his wife GiGi’s
church-long hugs? It was years before
I heard his real name or learned
he wasn’t kin, more till someone
mentioned West Indian. Always
the gentleman, one of the first I loved
to die, his lean voice confessed that spring
the chemo was over—Don’t know
son, this stuff, it’s got me by the bones.
Mostly, I remember his hands large
numbing mine, numbering, at the end
sounding almost surprised—My,
he’d say, you’re quite the grown
fellow—then his letting go.
There’s a way a woman
will not
relinquish
her pocketbook
even pulled
onstage, or called up
to the pulpit—
there’s a way only
your Auntie can make it
taste right—
rice & gravy
is a meal
if my late Great Aunt
Toota makes it—
Aunts cook like
there’s no tomorrow
& they’re right.
Too hot
is how my Aunt Tuddie
peppers everything,
her name given
by my father, four, seeing
her smiling in her crib.
There’s a barrel
full of rainwater
beside the house
that my infant father will fall
into, trying to see
himself—the bottom—
& there’s his sister
Margie yanking him out
by his hair grown long
as superstition. Never mind
the flyswatter they chase you
round the house
& into the yard with
ready to whup the daylights
out of you—
that’s only a threat—
Aunties will fix you
potato salad
& save
you some. Godmothers,
godsends,
Aunts smoke like
it’s going out of style—
& it is—
make even gold
teeth look right, shining,
saying I’ll be
John, with a sigh. Make way
out of no way—
keep the key
to the scale that weighed
the cotton, the cane
we raised more
than our share of—
If not them, then who
will win heaven?
holding tight
to their pocketbooks
at the pearly gates
just in case.
PALLBEARING
In the end it all
comes to this—
wigs & rosaries
folks bent to knees
first time in years
God blond above
the casket
& no one singing
or saying a thing—
men holding
their hats, uncut hair
keeping porkpie shapes
some with smiles
& kisses for widows—
the clumsy crosses
hands old or amnesiac
make—folks laying
hands on the body
as if to heal—this
goodbye is gone
& we line up
to lift, a grand-
son’s duty, bearing
the pall, like Paul
—my father’s name
though few call him that—
following the hearse
lights low cross
water knee deep
in the road, a sea
no Moses can part—
rain no Noah’s
seen for years—
I’m a get them niggahs
my Auntie says Da Da
dead, must have said,
making sure
there wouldn’t be
too much drinking
& carrying on
over him. Da Da,
along the road
from the wake
to the grave, that black
dog could be you
sniffing at sugar cane
fallen from trucks—
a struck possum
on the shoulder—
At the burial site your weight
is mine—I toss white
gloves in the grave
before it’s filled
& the saints go
marching past—
On the way back
to the house & the repast
& whatever else awaits
I still
bear you, lift you up
over fields, over cypress
& song The Kingpins
Baby
It’ll Be Alright
from the radio
next to distant cousins
barbequeing for us
Brudda—my father—
sees the dark circling
looks up & says Never
seen this many
crows in all
my days—
VICTUALS
He is dead so we eat.
In his heaven he must be
hungry—so we fill
ourselves, stomachs,
for him—the red sauce
& the meat, acres
of pies Aunties have
blessed. In the yard kin-
folk I’ve never met
open the giant barrel grill
& smoke seeps out
the lid. He is dead. Bury
our faces in food
to forget, in vain, the rain
falling, fallen, water standing
like he never again.
EULOGY
All talk
is lucky. Just ask
my grandpere, growing
into earth, half-
French, all man-
drake screaming when pulled
from its roots. (You need
a dog to undo it properly, staying
just out of earshot.)
Below us he hears
as the dead must, the day
speaking to itself, muttering
as he did, going deaf—
from him sounds retreat
as if beneath great
water. The Gulf. The coin
on his tongue drug
him down. I do say—
I loved him. Lucky
to have told him. Our talk
black cats crossing
the path—rare
& dangerous. Don’t give me
any lip. No jazz. Don’t ask
me to say it any
better than this—our last
and only kiss, butterflies
fluttering shut like mouths
above him.
Lost in the heat
we search the colored section
of the town cemetery
for my great-
grandfather’s grave—
find only crumbling names
that sound French
& familiar, none
his. Deep weeds. Jesus
a statue facing just
the white stones—
crucified high above,
his back to us.
Dependable as death, the white man
knocked each month, called
Mudda by her first name
& collected the next installment
for her burial. She paid
for her death fifty
times over, not just
in money, but if
you were there you’d see
that while he called her
Joycie
& she hunted for the money
she didn’t have, had somehow
set aside, my grandmother shot
him a look
that if you knew
her, & only if,
was the opposite
of affection—pity
perhaps, but more
like the disregard
the world had tried
tossing her way
& had failed. Even
his Thanks kindly
or See you next month
couldn’t counter
her long stare after
he let the screen door
slam shut, rusty springs
tsk-tsking behind him.
I learned to shoot
that summer in Maine
my father studying
medicine & teaching
me what he called
survival. I sent BB’s
or stones from a sling
through beer cans as
aluminum as the canoe
I figured out how
to row, each hole
an aim, exclamation.
Mornings, before seminars
on blindness & open
hearts, my father
taught me targets
& fishing: his unshaking
surgeon hands would thread
a hook, worm it, then cast out
like a leper, the pole
his unsteady crutch.
Gnats circled like verbs.
Dad paced that rotting
dock, threatening to cast
me in the lake—that’d
show me to swim all
right, and how.
That night I dreamt
the rental house
into water, woke
to wade among lures
leaned dark against
door frames, reeling
among what deep
I couldn’t breathe.
Next morning, the trout
I yanked from the grey-green
lake stared back like the lung
it didn’t have, mouth
opening & closed
in prayer, a dank flag
lifted feet free
of water I feared,
that damp even
my dog dared enter.
In the picture I look
happy as a trigger
holding the prize rainbow
high: dog, Dad, & me
glittering big as the fish,
rod & line stitching
us together like
the birthmark a doctor
removed so young
now only my slight,
side scar remembers.
I showed up for jury duty—
turns out the one on trial was me.
Paid me for my time & still
I couldn’t make bail.
Judge that showed up
was my ex-wife.
Now that was some
hard time.
She sentenced me
to remarry.
I chose firing squad instead.
Wouldn’t you know it—
Plenty of volunteers
to take the first shot
But no one wanted to spring
for the bullets.
Governor commuted my term to life
in a cell more comfortable
Than this here skin
I been living in.
I finally found me
a nice girl
to marry—
I thought she’d been voted
Most Likely
& Pretty
turns out she
was voted Most Pity.
Went on down to the courthouse
& the test said
we were kin—
not blood
but same proof
of liquor stained our veins.
We eloped
anyway.
Her mama’s name
was Backhand
& her daddy
called Jalopy—
they couldn’t give her away.
She had her a voice
like an axe
& danced
like a pickup
wrecked beside the road.
We spent our honeymoon
at home
since hell was booked
till who knows.
I’m the African American
sheep of the family.
I got my master’s
degree in slavery.
Immigrant
to the American dream,
Evacuee,
I seen the water
Ladder its way
above me. Swam
To the savings & loan—
no one home.
I’ve steered
Hardship so long—
Even my wages of sin
been garnished.
Wolf tickets
half off.
Collect call
& response.
Whenever we pass
on the street
Death pretends
not to know me
Though the grapevine say
he’s my daddy.
I have been known
to wear white shoes
beyond Labor Day.
I can see through
doors & walls
made of glass.
I’m in an anger
encouragement class.
When I walk
over the water
of parking lots
car doors lock—
When I wander
or enter the elevator
women snap
their pocketbooks
shut, clutch
their handbags close.
Plainclothes
cops follow me in stores
asking me to holler
if I need any help.
I can get a rise—
am able to cause
patrolmen to stop
& second look—
Any drugs in the trunk?
Civilian teens
beg me for green,
where to score
around here.
When I dance,
which is often,
the moon above me
wheels its disco lights—
until there’s a fight.
Crowds gather
& wonder how
the spotlight sounds—
like a body
being born, like the blare
of car horns
as I cross
the street unlooking,
slow. I know all
a movie needs
is me
shouting at the screen
from the balcony. From such
heights I watch
the darkness gather.
What pressure
my blood is under.
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest—BOB DYLAN
I want to be doused
in cheese
& fried. I want
to wander
the aisles, my heart’s
supermarket stocked high
as cholesterol. I want to die
wearing a sweatsuit—
I want to live
forever in a Christmas sweater,
a teddy bear nursing
off the front. I want to write
a check in the express lane.
I want to scrape
my driveway clean
myself, early, before
anyone’s awake—
that’ll put em to shame—
I want to see what the sun
sees before it tells
the snow to go. I want to be
the only black person I know.
I want to throw
out my back & not
complain about it.
I wanta drive
two blocks. Why walk—
I want love, n stuff—
I want to cut
my sutures myself.
I want to jog
down to the river
& make it my bed—
I want to walk
its muddy banks
& make me a withdrawal.
I tried jumping in,
found it frozen—
I’ll go home, I guess,
to my rooms where the moon
changes & shines
like television.
I want to be soused,
doused
in gasoline
& fried,
fired up like a grill—
Let’s get fired up
We are fired up
—I want to squeal
like a pig
or its skin. Gridiron.
Pork rind.
I want to be black
on the weekend—
I want God to root
for the home team.
I want to flood
my greens in vinegar
please.
I want everyone
to be named man.
Yes ma’am.
I want my cake
& to barbeque, too.
Propane, diesel,
rocket fuel—
It’s not the heat it’s
the hospitality.
I want to pray
on game day.
I want to sweat
in the shower,
to shoot
when I could say
somethin worse
like Jesus. I want a grill
of gold
& a God that tells
the truth, who sleeps
late on Sunday
& lets church out early
so I can make
the buffet.
I want the preacher to go late.
I want to give God
a nickname.
Talk turns
to who has the sugar
& how much water
you should drink a day,
to conspiracy theories—cornbread
can kill you—
Uncles give advice
not gifts. They forget
your birthday but recall
how short you once were
forever. In your mind
they always loom taller
even years after bumping you
the Bar-Kays from an 8-track—
all bass & bucket seats
in the souped-up black Camaro
parked in the yard
they mean to mow.
Uncles will build half
a house, the frame, the place
the plumbing will go, all
beam & bone,
& never finish the walls
till one day the rain will
rot it all.
Uncles got plans
& they’re big.
Uncles underestimate
everything but food, buy
in bulk then watch it
go bad. Uncles heal
with a touch & can fry
turkeys whole. Uncles smoke
menthols & speak
prophecy. Will lift
you above their head,
bad backs & all—will jerry-rig
a motor to an old-fashioned
lawnmower to slay
the weeds. Will lie
down after, exhausted,
prone on Mama’s couch,
refusing to see
no doctor—dragged in
lucky, Doc’ll say, hours before
shrapnel from some unseen
mowed-over tin
was about to bore
into their huge hearts.
Uncles lie
beautifully. Years later
Uncles won’t much remember—
instead show you their watch
that’s stopped—It’s ghetto,
they’ll laugh, flashing teeth
more gold than their timepiece
that’s a copy
of a copy of a copy—
the battery run down
but still worn, still shiny.
I wouldn’t be here
without you. Without you
I’d be umpteen
pounds lighter & a lot
less alive. You stuck
round my ribs even
when I treated you like a dog
dirty, I dare not eat.
I know you’re the blues
because loving you
may kill me—but still you
rock me down slow
as hamhocks on the stove.
Anyway you come
fried, cued, burnt
to within one inch
of your life I love. Babe,
I revere your every
nickname—bacon, chitlin,
cracklin, sin.
Some call you murder,
shame’s stepsister—
then dress you up
& declare you white
& healthy, but you always
come back, sauced, to me.
Adam himself gave up
a rib to see yours
piled pink beside him.
Your heaven is the only one
worth wanting—
you keep me all night
cursing your four-
letter name, the next
begging for you again.
You are everything
to me. Frog legs,
rattlesnake, almost any
thing I put my mouth to
reminds me of you.
Folks always try
getting you to act
like you someone else—
nuggets, or tenders, fingers
you don’t have—but even
your unmanicured feet
taste sweet. Too loud
in the yard, segregated
dark & light, you are
like a day self-contained—
your sunset skin puckers
like a kiss. Let others
put on airs—pigs graduate
to pork, bread
become toast, even beef
was once just bull
before it got them degrees—
but, even dead,
you keep your name
& head. You can make
anything of yourself,
you know—but prefer
to wake me early
in the cold, fix me breakfast
& dinner too, leave me
to fly for you.
My daddy died loving
you, had since
he was eight. High school
sweetheart, long distance
romance, it’s you he missed
most months
of the year, kept you near
like a picture, packed away
& pulled out when you weren’t
around to remind him
he was alive. Out,
into the wild, the world,
is where you led. He died
hunting after you, you
are like pity—always
too much of you, or not near
enough. I miss
the way he held you
& like time would not waste you.
Elusive mistress
he’d later marry, you were
the midwife of his late happiness
& he was born at home
with no spoon in his mouth,
no hammer in his hand,
just his hard head
I inherited. At this hour
I bet you fear
you were better off
dead, you widow of the field,
you father gone too soon—
my grandmother of all mercy
who’s outlived
her only, full-grown son
& never mentions the first
one who died
long ago young.
You are stronger
than you think. Quiet
cousin of mine, my uncle
made you & never knew
till years later
when you knocked at his door
& called him father.
Even his wife welcomes
you home. We all
seem loud with you around.
You fix the front porch
so it no longer leans—
take out the sting
the day my daddy’s buried,
talking trash
& laughing. You crazy,
he would have said,
which where I come from
is a compliment. Mother
of moonshine, you swore
to get the jalopy in the lawn
running again, may get
around to it yet.
Though cloudy, you know
better than anyone
that death, while hell,
may make folks better—
you keep just
this side of rotten.
For you we’ve had to come up
with new names—
fermented, brewed,
settling in—but, lucky
for us, no funds.
Slow to anger, quick
to act, you are
the house my father
was born in, only last year
torn down to stop
from falling on this one—
the child’s chair my grandfather
or his father made,
rocking, wood, painted
a green that won’t
quit blooming
but must have seemed
to most folks only old, tossed
behind the house to rot
with the blackberries. Saved,
shipped, shaken
free of mites, that rocker
I found after my father’s
funeral is like you—rickety
yet sturdy, you always
do the trick. You never
beg, nor borrow, save
all pain for tomorrow.
Like y’all, or sorrows,
or pigsfeet,
or God, your name
always holds multitudes—
is never just one—
unlike moose or deer
or death—which means both many
& alone. Little Lazarus,
you’re the world before
the flood, & what’s after,
are ash turning back
to a body. Done wrong,
you are the flavor
of a communion wafer.
Miss Hominy,
for years I misheard
your name as Harmony
& I was right. Kissing cousin
to Cream of Wheat, godmother
to oatmeal, no one
owns you, much less
no Quaker. Those mornings
over Strawberry Quik
when the kettle called
the Cream of Wheat cook
to meet me for breakfast,
you waited patiently to shine
the whites of your million eyes
on me. You must know
I love you by the way
I like you plain, maybe
buttered up a bit.
Salty, you keep me
on my toes, let me
believe, this once,
in purity—no cheese,
no grape jelly, no Missus
Butterworth’s. Undoctored,
your cloudy stare
unlike my father’s, his one
eye no bullet met
that, hours after he was shot
through the other,
I had to decide to give over
to someone still
alive, some girl or old
man whose vision—
even dead, ever
the healer—my father saved.
Resurrected like you
are daily. Welcome
stranger, pennywise
prophet, you are the wet nurse
of mercy, the rock
water makes speak.
i.m. Charlie Barfield
1950–2007
How do you like them wrankles?
asks my uncle, parish
constable, four
hundred pounds if he’s
an ounce, & my best
answer may be: A lot.
Wrinkled wise man,
you are the kind of kin
I trust few hands
to help with—like his wife my Auntie
Faye’s, whose name might
as well be Faith, for that’s
what lets me let her
bring you to me
bleached, boiled, run
through the washing machine
till clean. Sweetbread’s
sister, tripe’s long
lost cousin, you’re the uncle
I one day learnt
wasn’t really—but I have grown
old enough, & young, to know blood
& family ain’t always the same—
so you, I claim. You fed me
when I would have withered
without you, you weather me
like little else. I place
my hands upon you, old
family friend, & pray
you’re well the way
my blood-uncle phoned
to pray with me after
my father died, when all
I wanted was his best
brisket, smoked slow.
Pork loin’s poor brother,
you visit once a year, come
Christmas, if we’re lucky—lately
even less. No use
waiting, or complaining—
your guts
are glory. Though your birth
certificate may read Chitterlings,
only Holy Ghosts’ baptism record
gets your name right, like it did
my daddy’s. Despite what
the newspapers say, your name
is not short
for anything, needs
no apostrophe. Those tight jeans
you wear, the ones with creases
ironed in—your linen
suit in winter—are out
of style & you don’t care
who knows it. The road may seem long at first
you whisper, but see how brief
it’s grown? The trail
may be full of shit
but you can make music
of even that. The last
place you’d look, you’re hog
heaven—hard
to get to, much less
clean, you’re where
we all end up. You are the finale
of most everything, grow
better with time
& Pace picante. Priest
of the pig, monk
of all meat, you warn me
with your vows
of poverty
that cleanliness is next
to impossible, that inside
anything can sing.
You are never what you seem.
Like barbeque, you tell me time
doesn’t matter, that all
things wait. You take long
as it takes. Wife
to worry, you can sit
forever, stewing, grown
angrier by the hour.
Like ribs you are better
the day after, when all
is forgiven. Death’s daughter,
you are often cross—bitter
as mustard, sweet
when collared—yet no one
can make you lose
all your cool, what strength
you started with. Mama’s
boy, medicine woman,
you tell me things end
far from where
they begin, that forgiven
is not always forgotten.
One day the waters will part.
One day my heart will stop & still
you’ll be here dark
green as heaven.
I been called by God
to testify
against him.
And the heart in its hole
knocks trying
to get out.
Pretty cage.
Sorrow the plate
scraped clean—
it’s neither the food
eaten too fast
to enjoy, nor the empty
plate, but
the scraping.
What a song.
All night
long the silence
singing. The moles
making their way
beneath me while I sleep.
And Houdini, who could
escape anything, all
he wanted was to find
a way to speak
with his dead mother, so spent
most his life
proving séances false.
Now that’s love.
He died
because he wasn’t ready.
Me, I’m secondhand
like sections in the bookstore
I never noticed before—
Mysteries, or Used
Philosophy.
Downtown a hotel declares
Welcome
Great West Casualty.
Why not
decide the road along the rise
past the drive-in
showing nothing
& the church sign on the fritz
flashing like lightning.
Some days there is nothing
of the blues
I can use
so I put down
my pen & walk instead
humming Memories
of You by Louie
Armstrong—
it won’t be long
before I have forgotten
the words, & soon
enough the words
will have gone
& forgotten me—
the silence we all meet.
I guess at God—
the road twisting east
or south toward
the quarries,
fading light.
My body rejecting
my own heart.
Trees touching
above the buildings.
I want to raise
my face
to the blackboard sky—
forgetting how hard
it is for me
not to believe—
& scrawl my name
on a slate
no hand can erase.
It’s getting harder
to live without
faith, or you,
or whatever
we choose to call
what calls
to us in the quiet.
The cat that sleeps
on my mailbox, yawning.
The sky dark
at noon & soon
snow salting the ground.
Days almost zero.
What this world is
isn’t enough
& that’s enough—
or must be.
Steady flurries.
I want to enter the earth
face first.
Hurry—
i.m. Richard Newman
d. 2003
Straight-backed pews
painted white
Compost, not trash
Boston marriage
Public school or Private
Paper, not plastic
Frappe, not milkshake
or malted
Rotary, not roundabout
Where do you summer?
Native, native, tourist
My loneliness
study group meets Thursdays
Shore, coast, overfished
Soda, not pop
Wetlands, not swamp
No Sunday Sales
Irish Twins
I’m a vegetarian
though I still love lamb
Pulpits high up
Spas, bubblers,
dry cleansers
Pineapple fences
Red tide
Sparkling or still
Woodchucks, not groundhogs
My dog & I
are both on a diet
Pay at the counter
Do you smell fire?
This is our year
All we need
is some good pitching
The Begonia Club
Volvo Volvo Volvo
Volvo Honda Volvo
The town my great-
grandfather founded
is just a tiny one
Fans, not a/c
Indian pudding
Patriot’s Day, Bunker
Hill Day, Evacuation Day,
Lime Rickey
Curse, not pennant
Hiss, not boo
Pews you unlatch
to climb into, then lock
shut behind you
Belief in God is proof
people exist.
Praise the restless beds
Praise the beds that do not adjust
that won’t lift the head to feed
or lower for shots
or blood
or raise to watch the tinny TV
Praise the hotel TV that won’t quit
its murmur & holler
Praise visiting hours
Praise the room service
that doesn’t exist
just the slow delivery to the front desk
of cooling pizzas
& brown bags leaky
greasy & clear
Praise the vending machines
Praise the change
Praise the hot water
& the heat
or the loud cool
that helps the helpless sleep.
Praise the front desk
who knows to wake
Rm 120 when the hospital rings
Praise the silent phone
Praise the dark drawn
by thick daytime curtains
after long nights of waiting,
awake.
Praise the waiting & then praise the nothing
that’s better than bad news
Praise the wakeup call
at 6am
Praise the sleeping in
Praise the card hung on the door
like a whisper
lips pressed silent
Praise the stranger’s hands
that change the sweat of sheets
Praise the checking out
Praise the going home
to beds unmade
for days
Beds that won’t resurrect
or rise
that lie there like a child should
sleeping, tubeless
Praise this mess
that can be left
I’m sick of this century
already.
My pleasant things all
ashes are.
No horizon—you can tell
the sky & ground
apart only
by guessing.
Rookie mistake.
Misery
is the only company
that would hire me
& I learnt yesterday
I’m getting laid off.
I wish wrong
& too often.
My pension
long gone, my job farmed
out to someone
better at failing—
I’ve been trained
in nothing.
I have taken myself
apart in the dark—
put back
together like a soldier
in the rain—one gear
always left over.
What we love
will leave us
or is it
we leave
what we love,
I forget—
Today, belly
full enough
to walk the block
after all week
too cold
outside to smile—
I think of you, warm
in your underground room
reading the book
of bone. It’s hard going—
your body a dead
language—
I’ve begun
to feel, if not
hope then what
comes just after—
or before—
Let’s not call it
regret, but
this weight,
or weightlessness,
or just
plain waiting.
The ice wanting
again water.
The streams of two planes
a cross fading.
I was so busy
telling you this I forgot
to mention the sky—
how in the dusk
its steely edges
have just begun to rust.
The bags beneath
my eyes are packed
but won’t leave—
neither can I—
My plane hit
by lightning.
So I check back into Vegas
feeling like late Elvis—
not broke but broken.
Hard to know
when you’re sick
of this place, or just sick—
There’s always roulette.
I only bet black.
Soon my money
gone like Johnny
Cash who left us
after a dozen almosts—
spinning the rigged wheel
like a tune.
In May, June went—then July,
August, & now Johnny
who we’ll rename autumn after.
Sadder than
a wedding dress
in a thrift store—
Salvation’s an army
& Sun the record
I once found Cash’s face on
warped but still good
for 5 bucks.
Death does
a brisk business.
Checking out,
the next morning I thought
I saw God
playing the cheap slots, praying
he’ll win
before he loses.
I give the wheel one last spin
playing the age
I’ll soon be
if I’m lucky—
the age Jesus was
when his Daddy did him in—
& hit—
Dealer stacks chips & asks
Want to keep going?
My plane waiting
to fly me home again
I think hard a moment,
tip big, cash
out & split.
And fire. And sleet.
And cloud covering
Over everything.
And the cold.
Too soon—
And bargains
with the Devil later
You don’t regret.
And begging.
And belief.
Why now Lord.
And snow sealing
shut your eyes.
Enough.
And pleading
with Death to dawdle.
An hour.
A fortune.
No matter how much—
And tomorrow
still the sun
Who quits for no one.
I have driven for miles with bottles
left on my roof—
for miles folks pointing
out warnings
I thought welcomes.
I have waved back.
The sound
of broken glass
follows me around
like a stray.
Good boy.
Stay—
And the whales
washing themselves
ashore
nothing can save—
all day blankets wet
their skin like we’re taught
to put fires out.
And the volunteers pushing them
back out at high tide
sleep well, exhausted, even
proud—before forty more,
the same, days later pilot
themselves ashore again,
blowholes opening
and closing like fists.
And the sound.
And the fires out west
started by someone
lighting love letters
she didn’t want—
turns out to be a lie.
Blue blue windows
behind the stars.
And what if they had
been people instead
of whales, my mother wonders,
would that many
gather to save us?
Just enough
light to read.
The man in the American flag
dress shirt wants to pick
a fight. He’s been grabbing
women & high-
fiving his buddies all night.
We’re here in Nashville
on our Meat Tour, getting the four
food groups in: chicken,
barbeque, cheeseburger, pork
chop sandwich still on the bone—
served with a pickle on a bun
and a half-full bottle of A.1.
The boot store also sells songs.
Johnny Cash’s Big River
rolled out half-dozen times
along music row—requests
& tips—before we line up
like shots of Tennessee
sour-mash whisky
to see BR5-49, band named
for the telephone exchange
on the opening of Hee Haw.
Back when television
had no backup & you had to stand
to change channels, for an addict
kid like me Saturday-night TV
meant waiting out Lawrence Welk,
& then Buck Owens jumping out
of the corn, Minnie Pearl’s hat
with the price tag still on it
dangling like a toe tag
on a dead man. The jokes
I never did get. Still the music told
what gingham would not—
heartbreak & history, voices
where accents are assets—
Close enough
for country music—
those twilight hours before Love
Boat became Fantasy Island
just as before the band who know
more Hank Williams than Hank
himself did, dead
in the back of his car
still headed toward a gig,
we must endure
coulda-beens like Johnny
Paycheck, who the poster
pictures young, handsome,
& pissed. His backup,
expanding-waist band
vamps till Johnny huffs,
washed up
neat & bearded, onstage,
the two steps to the risers
sending him out of breath.
Even jail, & years
of hard living,
don’t deserve such
ashen fate. Paycheck
bounces along his set, enters
songs late & gets out
early, always ending with
Thank you all very much
no matter the thin applause.
Smoker’s cough. Everyone
restless to hear his #1 pop
& country hit—Take This Job
and Shove It—
& while I hit the head
more out of boredom
than need, Paycheck obliges,
grudging into it, tonight less
an anthem against the Man
than a ditty disappointed
in itself—behind him the band
noodles solos while Paycheck,
spent, graduate
of anger management,
phones in
his resignation. Almost
an afterthought—
no encore—whoops
from the American flag
now too drunk to stand
or dance, in a town
that tonight, to Johnny, soon
dead, must seem
Cash Only—for now
Paycheck simply
smiles Goodnight—
wheezes—You’re too kind.
Even Death
don’t want me.
Spiders in my shoes.
Even God.
I tried
drinking strychnine
Or going to sleep
neath the railroad ties—
Always the light
found me first.
The Law.
Put me under arrest
for assaulting a freight—
Disturbing what peace.
(Turns out it
was only strych-eight.)
Tired of digging
my own grave.
Tired.
Spiders in my shoes.
The paperboy only
sold me bad news.
And wet at that.
The obit page said:
Not Today.
The weather blue too.
Stones all in my shoes.
I wake to the cracked plate
of moon being thrown
across the room—
that’ll fix me
for trying sleep.
Lately even night
has left me—
now even the machine
that makes the rain
has stopped sending
the sun away.
It is late,
or early, depending—
who’s to say.
Who’s to name
these ragged stars, this
light that waters
down the milky dark
before I down
it myself.
Sleep, I swear
there’s no one else—
raise me up
in the near-night
& set me like
a tin toy to work,
clanking in the bare
broken bright.
Old man,
despite your beard
& bald head
you still ain’t old
enough to be dead—
you swim back
slipping through my hands
into the dark & I wake.
Even in dreams you are dead.
Your fresh, certain smell—
cornbread batter frying
in the pan—mornings still
fills my face
& I am glad. No matter
the pain it takes
to hold you, your barbs
& beard, you sustain me
& I wander
humming your hundred names—
brother, bullhead, paperskin, slick.
Remember the day, po boy,
you fried up catfish
with grits for breakfast, your mother
& sisters surrounding us
& you declared it
perfect? Sweet Jesus
you were right.
Fish hooks in my heart.
My plate full of bones
I’m scared to swallow.
Humbly, I come to you now
O bruised lord, beautiful
wounded legume,
in this time of plague, in my
very need. Ugly angel,
for years I have forsaken
you come New Year’s Day,
have meant to meet you
where you live & not
managed to. I gave you up
like an unfaithful lover, but still
you nag me like a mother.
Like the brother I don’t have
I need you now to confide in,
my eyes & yours darkened
by worry, my baby
shoes bronzed & lost.
Awkward antidote,
bring me luck & whatever
else you choose & I’ll bend low
to shore you up. Part
of me misses you, part knows
you’ll never leave, the rest
wants you to hear my every
unproud prayer. Wounded
God of the Ground, Our Lady
of Perpetual Toil & Dark Luck,
harbor me & I pledge each
inch of my waist not to waste
you, to clean my plate
each January & like you
not look back. You are
like the rice & gravy my Great
Aunt Toota cooked—you need,
& I with you, nothing else.
Holy sister, you are my father
planted along the road
one mile from where he
was born, brought full
circle, almost. You, the visitation
I pray for & what vision
I got—not quite
my father’s second sight.
My grandmother saying
she dreams of me
& he every night. Every
night. Every night.
Small book of hours, quiet
captain, you are our future
born blind, eyes swole shut,
or sewn.
For weeks I have waited
for a day without death
or doubt. Instead
the sky set afire
or the flood
filling my face.
A stubborn drain
nothing can fix.
Every day death.
Every morning death
& every night
& evening
And each hour
a kind of winter—
all weather
is unkind. Too
hot, or cold
that creeps the bones.
Father, your face
a faith
I can no longer see.
Across the street
a dying, yet
still-standing tree.
So why not
make a soup
of what’s left? Why
not boil & chop
something outside
the mind—let us
welcome winter
for a few hours, even
in summer. Some
say Gumbo
starts with filé
or with roux, begins
with flour & water
making sure
not to burn. I know Gumbo
starts with sorrow—
with hands that cannot wait
but must—with okra
& a slow boil
& things that cannot
be taught, like grace.
Done right,
Gumbo lasts for days.
Done right, it will feed
you & not let go.
Like grief
you can eat & eat
& still plenty
left. Food
of the saints,
Gumbo will outlast
even us—like pity,
you will curse it
& still hope
for the wing
of chicken bobbed
up from below.
Like God
Gumbo is hard
to get right
& I don’t bother
asking for it outside
my mother’s house.
Like life, there’s no one
way to do it,
& a hundred ways,
from here to Sunday,
to get it dead wrong.
Save all the songs.
I know none,
even this, that will
bring a father
back to his son.
Blood is thicker
than water under
any bridge
& Gumbo thicker
than that. It was
my father’s mother
who taught mine how
to stir its dark mirror—
now it is me
who wishes to plumb
its secret
depths. Black
Angel, Madonna
of the Shadows,
Hail Mary strong
& dark as dirt,
Gumbo’s scent fills
this house like silence
& tells me everything
has an afterlife, given
enough time & the right
touch. You need
okra, sausage, bones
of a bird, an entire
onion cut open
& wept over, stirring
cayenne in, till the end
burns the throat—
till we can amen
& pretend
such fiery
mercy is all we know.
Caramel. Coffee cake.
Chocolate I don’t much love
anyway. Tough taffy.
Anything with nuts.
Or raisins. Goobers.
Even my Aunt Dixie’s
apple pie recipe
or the sweet potato pie
my mother makes sing.
Even heaven. Even Boston
cream pie, Key Lime,
Baked Alaska, dense
flourless torte covered in raspberries
like a Bronx cheer.
Sherbet, spelt right,
and sandwiches
made of ice cream, even mint
or coffee I never drink,
even sherry, and smooth port
pulled up from shipwrecks
preserved on the bottom of the sea—
all this, & more, I would give up
to have you here, pumpkin-
colored father, cooking
for me—your hungry oven
humming—just one
more minute
Your leaving tastes
of nothing. Numb,
I reach for you
to cover my tongue
like the burnt word
of God—surrender
all to you, my fiery
sacrifice. My father
never admitted anything
was too hot
for him, even as the sweat
drained down his forehead,
found his worn collar
& eyes. You make mine
water & even water
won’t quench you.
Only bread bests you.
Only the earth cools
& quiets this leftover
life, lights
my open mouth.
These days I taste
only its roof—
my house
on fire, all the doors
locked, windows latched
like my heart. My heart.
Carve it out
& on the pyre—
after the witch hunt
& the devil’s
trial, after repentance
& the bright
blaze of belief—
it will outlive even
the final flame.
This is why I take
your sweet sting
into my eyes
& mouth like turpentine, rise
& try to face
the furnace of the day.
You sat in the tomb
of our family fridge
for years, without
fail. You were all
I wanted covering
my greens, satisfaction
I’ve since sought
for years in restaurants
which claimed soul, but neither
knew you nor
your vinegar prayer.
Baby brother
of bitterness, soothsayer,
you taught
me the difference between loss
& holding on. Next to the neon
of the maraschino cherries,
you floated & stayed
constant as a flame
on an unknown soldier’s grave—
I never did know
how you got here
you just were. Adrift
in your mason jar
you were a briny bit of where
we came from, rusty lid
awaiting our touch
& tongue—you were faith
in the everyday, not rare
as the sugarcane
my grandparents sent north
come Christmas, drained
sweet & dry, delicious, gone
by New Year’s—
no, you were nearer,
familiar, the thump
thump of an upright bass
or the brass
of a funeral band
bringing us home.
You are the chewing gum
of God. You are the reason
I know that skin
is only that, holds
more than it meets.
The heart of you is something
I don’t quite get
but don’t want to. Even
a fool like me can see
your broken
beauty, the way
out in this world where most
things disappear, driven
into ground, you are ground
already, & like rice
you rise. Drunken deacon,
sausage’s half-brother,
jambalaya’s baby mama,
you bring me back
to the beginning, to where things live
again. Homemade saviour,
you fed me the day
my father sat under flowers
white as the gloves of pallbearers
tossed on his bier.
Soon, hands will lower him
into ground richer
than even you.
For now, root of all
remembrance, your thick chain
sets me spinning, thinking
of how, like the small,
perfect, possible, silent soul
you spill out
like music, my daddy
dead, or grief,
or both—afterward his sisters
my aunts dancing
in the yard to a car radio
tuned to zydeco
beneath the pecan trees.